Artificial Intelligence Supported Identification of Novel Non-invasive Biomarkers of Aging
During a recent secondment with DunavNET as part of the TRACEWINDU project, mr Dejan Babic and Ivan Jovovic spent a month long studying visit. They engaged in productive discussions with DunavNET’s expert team members. Their visit included trainings and workshop on the AI/ML, IoT and Blockchain. This experience and training contributed to their capacity building and skills development in practical applications and technology driven innovation.
We are thrilled to announce a new collaboration between the Faculty of Medicine, Univiersity of Montenegro and Faculty for Information Systems and Technologies at the University of Donja Gorica. This partnership opens the doors for selected researchers from UDG to access UK Biobank data, enabling them to bring their expertise in data analysis and artificial intelligence to the forefront of cutting-edge medical research. Learn more at [link]
🔍 What’s the Goal?
The primary objective of this collaboration is to develop an innovative algorithm that compares microvascular complexity across three groups:
✨ Why It Matters:
This partnership exemplifies the transformative potential of combining retinal imaging with AI-powered analysis. Together, we are uncovering critical links between diseases and pushing the boundaries of early detection and treatment strategies for complex conditions like dementia and cancer.
🌍 A Global Effort:
By merging international resources, state-of-the-art technology, and interdisciplinary expertise, we are taking bold steps toward improving healthcare outcomes for patients worldwide.
💡 Together, we are shaping the future of personalized medicine and driving innovation in healthcare. Stay tuned for updates on this exciting journey!
Mr. Stevan Cakic, a PhD candidate and a member og the AI-AGE team, implemented a mobility to University of Barcelona. The visit was implemented with the support from the Ministry of Education, Science and Innovation. It took place in October 2024. During the visit Stevan exchanged experience and knowledge with AI/ML and HPC researchers at the UAB. He also took a chance to visit supercomputer center and NCC Spain.
The UK Biobank is a world-renowned resource, housing comprehensive health and genetic data from over 500,000 participants. This invaluable platform is revolutionizing medical research by providing researchers access to detailed medical, lifestyle, and imaging data, driving breakthroughs in understanding and treating diseases like cancer, dementia, and other chronic illnesses.
🌟 Key Project Highlight:
One of the pivotal research initiatives, “Exploring the Link Between Dementia and Cancer: Retinal Biomarkers as Predictors of Colon Cancer and Dementia”, is uncovering how retinal biomarkers can serve as early predictors for both colorectal carcinoma and Alzheimer’s disease. By analyzing microvascular complexity in retinal fundus images, this project seeks to identify patterns that could enhance early diagnosis and patient care. Learn more at [link]
✨ Inspired by the RECOGNISED Project:
This initiative builds on insights from the EU-funded RECOGNISED project, which explores the connection between retinal health, cognitive dysfunction, and the risk of dementia in individuals with type 2 diabetes. RECOGNISED has demonstrated the immense potential of retinal imaging as a tool to understand and address chronic diseases. More on RECOGNISED project at [link]
Together, these projects exemplify how innovative approaches and global collaboration can transform healthcare by addressing pressing challenges and improving early detection strategies.
💡 Retinal biomarkers are unlocking new possibilities in personalized medicine and preventive care—advancing our fight against complex diseases.
As planned, our project AI-AGE is advancing high-performance computing (HPC) infrastructure to support AI-driven research on biomarkers of aging in medical applications. This initiative will empower our team with cutting-edge resources, allowing us to enhance our capacity for data analysis and predictive modeling. To meet the demands of sophisticated AI computations, with the support of AI-AGE, we are upgrading our existing HPC setup with a powerful computing node. This new addition includes a rack computing node equipped with a 48 CPU cores with 128GB RAM, NVIDIA L40 48GB GPUs, and 2x480GB internal SSDs. In addition, the project supported NAS storage of 24TB (multiple disks with RAID) dedicated for dataset management. This infrastructure enhancement is designed to integrate smoothly with our existing equipment, augmenting both our computational and storage capabilities while providing significant value for our investment.
AI-AGE project, supported by the Ministry of education, science and innovation, is implemendet through collaboration between Faculty for information systems and technologies at Uiversity of Donja Gorica, and Faculty of medicine at University of Montenegro. The in-house HPC infrastructure is a result of cross-project collaboration with HPC4S3ME project (IPA programme) and both of these project are done with the support from EUROCC NCC Montenegro. The main goal for the in-house lab is for researchers to gain a hands on experience with physical equipment a their disposal, while for larger computing tasks, we will apply for computing time on some of the EU supercomputers.
The public defense of the Research Topic Proposal for the Doctoral Dissertation by candidate Dr. Isidora Rubežić Lukić, titled “Methods for Assessing Biological Age and Their Correlation with Morbidity and Frailty Syndrome,” took place on September 24, 2024, at the Faculty of Medicine, University of Montenegro, before a committee consisting of:
After the candidate’s presentation, the committee members provided comments and suggestions important for the continuation of her dissertation work and posed questions that the candidate successfully answered. After all comments and suggestions were adequately addressed, the committee unanimously decided that the candidate had successfully defended her doctoral dissertation topic.
The initial recruitment of the patinets for the AI-Age project is finalized. It was conducted in the primary health care clinics of the Podgorica, the capital of Montenegro. We aim to compare the populations of Great Britain and Montenegro in terms of multimorbidity and frailty status, taking into account differences in economic status and life expectancy (80.7 years in the UK, 76.3 in Montenegro).
AI-AGE team participated in presenations during the implementation of the “Awakening the vision at UDG 2024”. We gave several presentations and workshops relevant to the AI and need to understend and adopt the AI in everyday’s life and workflow. Please check out the video about the event that engaged about 1000 new students enrolled in the first year of studies at UDG.
Isidora Rubežić – Lukić, MD, will publicly present the goals and expected results, as well as present the research program with the conditions for the successful completion of the doctoral thesis entitled: “Methods for the assessment of biological age and their correlation with morbidity and frailty syndrome”. This preliminary defense will take place in the Meetin Room, Faculty of Medicine, before the Committee for the Evaluation of Doctoral Dissertation Applications, consisting of:
This FFplus open call for the development of generative AI models (“innovation studies“) )addresses the needs of SMEs and Start-ups proficient in generative AI and HPC for large-to extreme-scale computing resources. The strategic objective is to facilitate and strengthen the technological development of European SMEs in the area of generative AI. The participating SMEs and Start-ups will be supported in enhancing their innovation potential by leveraging new generative AI models, such as Large Language Models (LLMs), building on their existing expertise, application domain, business model and potential for expansion. Link: https://www.ffplus-project.eu/en/open-call/innovation-studies/
This announcement is the first call for proposals to address the uptake of HPC by SMEs in order to solve specific business challenges of SMEs that have had no prior use of, or experience with, HPC services. The resulting sub-projects will perform “business experiments” (also referred to just as experiments) that should demonstrate to the broader European SME ecosystem that HPC uptake solves business challenges and leads to positive business impact through the use and deployment of HPC-based computational methods. Thus, their key outputs are success stories that promote, communicate, and disseminate the business impact of HPC uptake to the SME ecosystem. Link: https://www.ffplus-project.eu/en/open-call/business-experiments/
